family, cycling and communications

Here is a lovely post on the recent #bloodycyclists story that has been the biggest story in UK cycling over the past week. If you don’t know what it is about, a woman driving a car tweeted that she had hit a cyclist and that she had right of way, because cyclists don’t pay road tax – there is no road tax. Well the police got involved and the thing went very viral.

Helen Blackman has put together a very well written view of the situation that demands reading.

I’ve had an uneasy couple of days cycling but perhaps not for any obvious reasons. Last Sunday a cyclist from the Iceni Velo Club in Norwich was knocked off his bike. I live in Devon, I don’t know him and there’s no particular reason this should unsettle me beyond basic human empathy. The cyclist is relatively OK and although cyclists are sometimes injured and worse, cycling is a relatively safe form of transport. However, now when I ride I have an uneasy sense of driver hatred.

Toby Hockley was on a sportive. He was pedalling along minding his own business when, according to him, a car travelling in the opposite direction took a bend too fast and came over to his side of the road. It knocked him and his bike into the hedge. By the time he was on his feet again, car and driver had disappeared. This is